Selim wrote:-
>1) Is it possible to measure learning in organisations? If yes, how?
>2) Are questionaries the best and reliable way to measure organizational
>learning? If yes, what topics can be listed? Is there anyone who can
>provide me an example of the questionaire?
Selim.
Your request has followed one or two more all basically asking the same
thing.
I speak as a qualified teacher, who taught for 6 years in state schools in
the UK. That business was about getting young people to learn, and, using
a set of measures called tests and examinations, to try and evaluate what
they had learned. This was followed by a long period in the IT industry
where the main thrust was to constantly change the status quo. Not only
we did stuff new hardware and software into customers, more importantly,
we .. the suppliers .. made huge demands on the would-be users. The
growth in IT has, I suggest, been one of the greatest change agents of the
second half of the 20th century.
Those changes made huge learning demands on operating staff as well as
users. Users were always the worst sufferers since the management in most
customers did not, and would not, measure up to the training requirements
new systems made.
The stupidity of this was really brought home to me on reading W Edwards
Deming and Walter Shewhart. School examinations are about what a student
can remember .. and we all have differing abilities to remember that do
not necessarily affect/influence our ability to learn. And secondly,
training has to be carefully built to match each of the learner's own
needs.
Deming is credited with inventing his PDCA cycle ..Plan/Do/Check/Act later
to be modified to PDSA Plan/Do/Study/Act. He used it as a tool to improve
a process.
This made clear, to me at least, the futility of trying to measure
learning outside the target area where the learning is supposed to be
happening.
Part of the Planning action is to devise a script of those things you are
hoping to change in the process. It is your plan for a small-scale
experiment. These changes will contribute to an improved process. The Do
stage is where the small-scale experiment is allowed to happen. The Study
stage in the cycle is precisely the point where learning is intended to
take place. There is a purpose behind our learning. It is specific
learning .. can we learn anything about how our plan has worked? The Study
stage is where those questions in the script should be asked and answered.
The answers may not be what you wanted! In which case you are on a
learning point .. and can follow it up. What really did happen here? Why
hasn't what we expected taken place? .. you know the questions this sort
of industrial/business experiment produces. And the Act stage is where we
put into practice what we have learned. We raise the scale of the
experiment, we set about devising a new set of experiments (because the
earlier one gave us unexpected results), etc. And .. of course it is a
cycle: it is carried out many many times, hopefully each stage gradually
improving the process.
What I am (labouring) here is that rather than try and devise open ended
and diffuse "how can we measure learning", look instead at a specific
process .. industrial or business, and set about trying to improve it. Use
the Deming cycle .. and let your learning be specific .. about the changes
that you want to bring about within the process.
And how will you know if you have succeeded? An improved process ..
improved because you have learned something .. will produce a higher ratio
of "on target" products, will reduce the cycle time for an administrative
process, will show an increased count in customer satisfaction. The
measures are real: they are not opinion.
So, in short, I don't think questionnaires are of any use at all. I
would suggest .. and I will be interested in list members' responses
that, that which we call organisational learning, is really the sum of
all the small scale learning that takes place, whether it be a one-off
exercise ..or continuous improvement initiatives within an
organisation.
Roy Greenhalgh
-- Roy Greenhalgh Associates Tel: (+44) 1454.294200 Townwell House FAX: (+44) 1454.294200 Cromhall Wotton under Edge Mobile: 0976.881013 Gloucestershire GL12 8AQ United KingdomLearning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>